


The Peace in Pining

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 11:43:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15556959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: In which Grantaire muses on his feelings for a certain golden-haired leader, and in which he indulges in lots of metaphors that are certainly not signs of the l-o-v-e word for Enjolras.





	The Peace in Pining

There’s a sort of peacefulness that comes with pining. The days pass, one by one,or all at once, all of them marked only by a hope that can never truly come to light. The passage of time is marked not by hours nor by sunrises, but by moments when he smiles. An eon begins when he enters the Musain and ends when he departs. Empires rise and fall in the length of his speeches and stars fall from the sky in the times when he is silent.

If pining is pain, for Grantaire, it is the steady sort that builds calluses over time, ( _and oh, how callused is his heart already. Made of stone and wrapped with the wire of sarcasm_ ) preparing the body for that ache never to end, rather than the type which ripples through the body, destroying all that it touches. (i _f they ever touched, on purpose, in passion, then that would destroy him_ )

Not that Grantaire would ever refer to what he felt for the man standing on the other side of the room, book in hand, shaming the sunlight around him with his own fire, as pining.

Perhaps, a craving? No. Cravings can be distracted if not sated. If one craves a crisp autumn apple in the middle of the summer, that hunger can be placated by a handful of tart cherries. Their sweet-bitter taste will linger differently, true, staining lips and hands red, ( _red like his passion)_  but the need for an apple will fade in the time it takes the stain to fade. ( _red, like the stupid waistcoat Grantaire had rushed out to purchase, because there were no seasons where he was concerned, only the endless, timeless ache of wanting him_ ) No. Nothing about him would ever fade. 

Did Grantaire’s emotion stain his hands like cherries would? Could all the others see it on his skin when he laughed with them? Did his other lovers taste his desire for the one who would never have him when they kissed Grantaire’s mouth?

Maybe then it was a longing. Wasn’t there a famous verse about longing? A deer, longing for water?

Well, Grantaire was more an ox than a fawn, but certainly he had known that longing. On hot days, when there is no breeze, he has longed to dive into cool blue waters  _(blue like his eyes)_ and swim deep, deep enough that the heat is but a memory, and all is cool around him. Deep enough to drown.  _(How many others had drown in those eyes?)_

His friends, Grantaire  knew, referred to it as an addiction. Never to his face, no, but in whispers and looks. His one-sided desire just one more poor choice he’d made in a life full of them. ( _and yet, this one choice, this decision to sit in this smoky café and listen to the man speak words of justice and rebellion and a thousand things Grantaire did not believe in, that was not a poor choice. Was it?_ )

His friends were innocent, and were fools. They were not made of vices as Grantaire was.  They had never known the dance of need and fulfillment that all his bad choices ( _except him. He could never be bad. Unless Grantaire touched him. Then, surely his stained hands would lead them both into terribly bad actions_ ) always led. 

An addiction built on itself, a spiral staircase of need, leading down, down, down, into hell. But the golden-haired angel preaching revolution in this room, he was nothing of hell, and everything Grantaire knew of heaven.  _(Had he ever even chosen to love him? Or had it been woven into the story of his bones from the first breath he took?)_

Was it a hunger?

That was laughable. Even the worst hunger could be sated eventually. A feast, a banquet, a party, would answer that hunger, and dull it until the next night.  _(Just how many nights had passed? How many nights would they have left, with revolution in the air?)_  But this need could never be sated. No mater how many words were exchanged, how many moments passed, there was always the need for more. 

So reluctantly, deep in his heart _, (which even that he wished he did not have to admit he had_ ) he would name this as pining.

And it was all he knew. 

Some days, it even felt like peace.


End file.
